Читать книгу Chinese Art - Stephen W. Bushell - Страница 15

Lying at the center of Peking, the Forbidden City was the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Rectangular in shape, it is the world’s largest palace complex and covers 74 hectares. Surrounded by a six meter deep moat and a ten meter high wall are 9,999 buildings (today 8,662 are still intact). Construction of the palace complex began in 1407 and was completed fourteen years later in 1420.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony is at the heart of the immense Forbidden City palace complex. It is the grandest and the most important building in the nation. The Hall of Supreme Harmony is also known as the “Throne Hall.” Covering a floor area of 2,377 square meters, the grand hall is the largest wooden structure in the world. No building in the empire was allowed to be higher than it during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, because of its symbol of imperial power. The hall is 35 meters high, 64 meters wide, and 37 meters long, respectively. There are a total of 72 pillars, in six rows, supporting the roof. The doors and windows are embossed with clouds and dragons. The Hall was used for grand ceremonies such as the Emperor’s enthronement ceremony and the Emperor’s wedding.

Since yellow is the symbolic colour of the royal family, it is the dominant color in the Forbidden City. Roofs are built with yellow glazed tiles; decorations in the palace are painted yellow; even the bricks on the ground are made yellow through a special process. However, there is one exception. Wenyuange, the royal library, has a black roof. The reason for this is that it was believed that black represented water, and could therefore extinguish fire. The Wenyuange was build to house 36,000 volumes.

Bird’s eye View of the Forbidden city, 15th c. Forbidden City, Peking.

The pavilion of Literacy Profundity (Wenyuange), 1420.

Imperial Palace (Forbidden City), Peking.

The Hall of the Classics, called Pi Yung Kung, was built after an ancient model by the emperor Ch’ien Lung in Peking, adjoining the national university called Kuo Tzu Chien. The emperor goes there in state on certain occasions to expound the classics, seated upon the large throne within the hall, which is backed by a screen fashioned in the form of the five sacred mountains. It is a lofty square building with a four-sided roof covered with tiles enamelled imperial yellow, and surmounted by a large gilded ball, encircled by a pillared verandah under a second projecting roof of yellow tiles. Each of the four sides consists of seven pairs of folding doors with tracery panels. It is surrounded by a circular moat with marble balustrades crossed by four bridges leading to the central doors. On the sides of the courtyard in which it stands are two long, cloistered buildings sheltering 189 upright stone steles covered with inscriptions over the front or back.

The inscriptions comprise the complete text of the thirteen “classics,” and were engraved by the emperor Ch’ien Lung, in emulation of the Han and Tang dynasties, both of which had the canonical books cut in stone at Si An Fu, the capital of China in their time. The text is divided on the face of the stone into pages of convenient size, so that rubbings may be taken on paper and bound up in the form of books. It was the custom, as early as the Han Dynasty, to take such impressions, a practice which may possibly have first suggested the idea of block printing.

The name of the lake K’un-ming Hu, near Si’an Fu, once the leading metropolis in the province of Shensi, comes down from the Han Dynasty, when Emperor Wu Ti had a fleet of war ships maneuvering to exercise his sailors for the conquest of Indochina China.

The marble bridge of seventeen arches in the picture is a remarkable example of the fine stone bridges for which the neighborhood of Peking has been celebrated since Marco Polo described the many arched bridge of Pulisanghin, with its marble parapets crowned with lions, which spans the river Hunho, and is still visible from the hills which form the background of the summer palace. The bridge pictured above, which was built in the twentieth year of Ch’ien Lung (1755 A. D.), leads from the cemented causeway to an island in the lake with an ancient temple dedicated to the dragon god and called Lung Shên Ssu, the name of which was changed by Ch’ien Lung to Kuang Jun Ssu, the “Temple of Broad Fertility,” because the Emperor, as a devout Buddhist, objected to the deification of the Naga Raja, the traditional enemy of the faith.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony, 1406.

Imperial Palace (Forbidden City), Peking.

Pi Yung Kung (Biyong), Imperial Hall of the Classic, 1784. Peking.

Seventeen arch bridge, 18th c.

Summer Palace, Peking.